Everything inside him went still. “I hope you don’t mean what I think you do.”

“Marrying into the family on a permanent basis seems like an efficient way to make sure you eventually get to the front office.”

The chill that crept through him went all the way to his bones. “I said I wanted your blessing. I didn’t say I needed it.” He began to walk away, only to have Phoebe’s next words slap him from behind.

“If you go near her again, you can kiss the Stars good-bye.”

He turned, not believing what he heard.

Her eyes were cold and determined. “I mean it, Kevin. My sister’s been hurt enough, and I won’t let you use her to fulfill your long-term plans. Stay away from her. You can have the team or you can have Molly, but you can’t have both.”

Chapter 26

26

Daphne was in a very bad mood. It followed her around while she baked her favorite oatmeal-strawberry cookies, and it stuck to her side when she talked to Murphy Mouse, who’d moved into the woods a few weeks before. Even the big pile of shiny new coins jingling in her pink backpack didn’t make her feel better. She wanted to run to Melissa’s house for cheering up, but Melissa was planning a trip to Paris with her new friend, Leo the Bullfrog.

Most of all Daphne was in a very bad mood because she missed Benny. He made her angry sometimes, but he was still her best friend. Except she wasn’t his best friend anymore. Daphne loved Benny, but Benny didn’t love her.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the strap from her electric guitar. His new school started today, and he’d be having so much fun that he wouldn’t even think about her. He’d be thinking about touchdowns instead, and all the girl rabbits who’d be hanging out by the fence wearing tube tops and trying to entice him with foreign phrases and puffy lips and bouncy breasts. Girls who didn’t understand him like she did, who were impressed with his fame and money and green eyes, and didn’t know that he loved cats and needed entertaining sometimes and didn’t hate poodles nearly as much as he thought, and that he liked to sleep cuddled around her with his hand—

Molly ripped the paper from her yellow pad. This was supposed to be Daphne’s Bad Mood, not Daphne Does Dallas. She gazed out across Bobolink Meadow and wondered how some parts of her life could be so happy and some parts so sad.

The sweatshirt she’d spread in the grass had bunched under her bare legs. It was Kevin’s. As she straightened it, she tried to concentrate on the happy parts of her life.